TED is a non-profit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, and Design. Since then it has stepped into more and more fields. It includes two annual ( 年度的) conferences-the TED Conference on the North American West Coast each spring, and the TED Global Conference in Edinburgh UK each summer, which bring together the world's most excellent thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives ( in 18 minutes or less).

    On ted.com, we make the best talks and performances from TED and partners available to the world, for free. More than 1, 200 TED talks are now available,' with more added each week, which cover almost all topics from science to business to global issues- in more than 110 languages. They really help share ideas in communities around the world.

    We believe in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and eventually, the world. So we' re building here a clearinghouse (信息交流中心 ) that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world's most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other. Have an idea? We want to hear from you.

    Today, TED is best thought of as a global community. It's a community welcoming people from every field and culture who seek a deeper understanding of the world.

    Want to follow TED? Here are the ways to connect:

    Get TED news and conference coverage ( 新闻报道) on the TED Blog.

    Follow TED on Twitter:

    @TED News for all TED news and information

    @TED Talks for daily TED Talk release only

    See photos from TED events on Flicker.

    I took down the violin I made in the past two months, and walked towards the farmland outside. The violin shined in the sunlight, and I admitted, unwillingly, that it looked good. But I knew it was a mockery (笑柄) of my failure to find beauty.

    “What makes a violin beautiful?”

    I first asked this question as a three-year-old child and now again as a teenager. When I listened to a violin for the first time, I was so astonished by its beauty that I imagined a fairy living in the wooden frame. But fairies faded when I grew older. I wanted a reasonable answer to the question.

    I referred to Professor Ruan, my violin teacher, who introduced the violin to me 14 years ago. This 85-year-old man rhapsodized about (热烈赞美)the legend of Antonio Stradivari. “His violins are the most beautiful works human has ever crafted.” “Make a violin with your own hands," Professor Ruan suggested, "When you play it, you'll know.”

    However, when Professor Ruan introduced to me a violin workshop, what I saw was far from my expectation. In front of me was a fat worker, shirtless and sunburned, soon to become my master. What shocked me most was that the “master” knew nearly nothing about music. His rough hands had been tending crops, not instruments, for most of his life.

Two months later, standing outside the workshop, I was disappointed. Yes, I just finished or copied a Stradivarius violin. But I didn't find beauty in it. Then I remembered Professor Ruan's words, "When you play it, you'll know.” So I closed my eyes, and focused on where my fingers and strings touched. Music flowed suddenly so beautifully that for a moment I doubted my own ears. Slowly I opened my eyes, and with surprise found the fairy of my childhood fantasy dancing to my music — the two-year-old daughter of the master.

    Professor Ruan was right. I didn't find beauty until I played music with the violin, because beauty isn't in the instrument itself. It's just here, deep down, in ourselves.

    One of the great concerns that ornithologists have is that climate change will throw the nesting activities of birds out of sync (同步) with the availability of food for the raising of chicks. For one species, the pied flycatcher, a new study shows that some of its clan are proving to be remarkably adaptable.

    Upon returning to Europe from their African wintering grounds, the flycatchers time their egg-laying to the short period when juicy caterpillars (毛毛虫) are most abundant. During the past three decades this caterpillar peak has advanced by three weeks. Pied flycatchers initially had difficulty adjusting, but over time have started laying their eggs earlier to grab the caterpillars. Some, though, are doing a lot more to improve their reproductive chances of success, according to a study in the Journal of Avian Biology led by Christian Both of the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands.

    Like most bird species, pied flycatchers have long been thought to lay a single clutch of eggs during the breeding (繁殖) season. This was widely considered to be a trait that wouldn't change. Then, in 2007, a Swiss team led by Dr Ravussin began to suspect that clutch numbers were flexible. They discovered a female pied flycatcher that immediately produced a second brood with a new male after raising an early set of chicks. Aware of Dr Ravussin's findings, Dr Both wondered whether this was just a single, odd instance or if second broods might be happening on a larger scale driven by the arrival of earlier springs. So, they cooperate to delve into the data to find out.

    The team studied pied-flycatcher populations in the Netherlands and Switzerland that were known to be among the earliest nesting members of the species. In total, they tracked the egg-laying times and hatchling-rearing success of 8,848 breeding pairs in the Netherlands and1, 372 in Switzerland between1980 and 2018. They found that since 2006, 11 cases of second broods were observed, all of them among the earliest breeders in both populations.

    Further studies ruled out that the birds were making up for a failed first attempt at raising chicks or that the second group of nestlings suffered.

    With no obvious downside to laying a double clutch, Drs Both and Ravussin conclude that the birds are attempting to double their annual reproductive output. While this behavior is still rare, they argue that if the tendency is driven by heritable genes (which it may well be), then a succession of early springs could make the strategy much more common.

    Only about 30 percent of people in the US know how to perform CPR (心肺复苏术). Recently, a 9-year-old boy showed a Georgia woman how to perform CPR on her newborn baby.

    Susanna Rohm said she had experienced a parent's worst nightmare (噩梦) — her 2-month-old son, Isiah, was not breathing. "I noticed he looked pale. I looked at his arms and his legs and they were limp (无力的)," Rohm told a local newspaper. "Then I noticed that he looked like he wasn't alive." Indismay, she dropped and broke her cellphone. Rohm had to run into the street, screaming for help.

    "I had him in my arms and screamed over and over. Then I ran outside. I saw two boys playing across the street, and I yelled, 'Go and ask your parents to call 911,'" Rohm said. But the two boys were able to do more than that. Nine-year-old Ethan Wilson took action, showing Rohm how to perform CPR on little Isiah while ten-year-old Rocky Hurt helped as well.

    Rocky said he had learned the CPR technique from a poster in a health class at their school, Sedalia Park Elementary. "I was thinking we'd better give her a helping hand instead of getting scared," Ethan said. "I told her to push on the baby's chest five to ten times a minute with only two fingers, tilt back the baby's head, plug the baby's nose and breathe into the baby's mouth," Ethan said in an interview.

    At last, Isiah began crying and was breathing again. He spent two nights in a local hospital. "If the little boy hadn't shown me what to do right there, my baby would probably not be alive right now," Rohm said.

    I was in the middle of the Amazon (亚马逊) with my wife, who was there as a medical researcher. We flew on a small plane to a faraway village. We did not speak the local language, did not know the customs, and more often than not, did not entirely recognize the food. We could not have felt more foreign.

    We were raised on books and computers, highways and cell phones, but now we were living in a village without running water or electricity It was easy for us to go to sleep at the end of the day feeling a little misunderstood.

    Then one perfect Amazonian evening, with monkeys calling from beyond the village green, we played soccer. I am not good at soccer, but that evening it was wonderful. Everyone knew the rules. We all spoke the same language of passes and shots. We understood one another perfectly. As darkness came over the field and the match ended, the goal keeper, Juan, walked over to me and said in a matter-of-fact way, "In your home, do you have a moon too?" I was surprised.

    After I explained to Juan that yes, we did have a moon and yes, it was very similar to his, I felt a sort of awe (敬畏) at the possibilities that existed in his world. In Juan's world, each village could have its own moon. In Juan's world. the unknown and undiscovered was vast and marvelous. Anything was possible.

    In our society, we know that Earth has only one moon. We have looked at our planet from every angle and found all of the wildest things left to find. I can, from my computer at home, pull up satellite images of Juan's village. There are no more continents and no more moons to search for, little left to discover. At least it seems that way.

    Yet, as I thought about Juan's question, I was not sure how much more we could really rule out. I am, in part, an ant biologist, so my thoughts turned to what we know about insect life and I knew that much in the world of insects remains unknown. How much, though? How ignorant (无知的) are we? The question of what we know and do not know constantly bothered me.

    I began collecting newspaper articles about new species, new monkey, new spider…, and on and on they appear. My drawer quickly filled. I began a second drawer for more general discoveries: new cave system discovered with dozens of nameless species, four hundred species of bacteria found in the human stomach. The second drawer began to fill and as it did I wondered whether there were bigger discoveries out there, not just species, but life that depends on things thought to be useless, life even without DNA. I started a third drawer for these big discoveries. It fills more slowly, but all the same, it fills.

    In looking into the stories of biological discovery, I also began to find something else, a collection of scientists, usually brilliant occasionally half-mad, who made the discoveries. Those scientists very often see the same things that other scientists see, but they pay more attention to them, and they focus on them to the point of exhaustion (穷尽), and at the risk of the ridicule of their peers. In looking for the stories of discovery, I found the stories of these people and how their lives changed our view of the world.

    We are repeatedly willing to imagine we have found most of what is left to discover. We used to think that insects were the smallest organisms (生物), and that nothing lived deeper than six hundred meters. Yet, when something new turns up, more often than not, we do not even know its name.

Many on the Mountain

We often see people waiting in lines at supermarkets, theatres and amusement parks. Surprisingly, some people even have to wait in line at the summit (顶峰) of Qomolangma in the Himalayas. 

The best time to climb the Himalayas is during the months of April and May, as well as some days in September and October. "In these periods of recent years, the path contains rocks and deep crack from melting ice due to the warm weather, which make expeditions up the mountain more dangerous," said Apa, an experienced Nepalese guide. During this year's climbing season, crowds of climbers became stuck in a long line near the summit. The line is above the mountain's highest campsite—about 8,000 meters above sea level. 

However, most people can only spend a few minutes at the summit without extra oxygen supplies. Twenty-one mountaineers have died in the Himalayan mountains so far this year, according to Gripped, a magazine dedicated to mountain climbing. Eleven of these climbers died on Qomolangma. 

This death count marks a four-year high. Overcrowding, inexperience and poor weather have been the most common causes of death, USA Today reported. 

After these tragedies, one question remains: Why do so many people risk their lives to climb the mountain? The answer differs from climber to climber. Studies suggest that people who take risks tend to perceive themselves differently than people who avoid risky activities. But for adventurers who are drawn to the Himalayas, reaching the summit of Qomolangma is a lifelong dream, according to Discovery News. 

"Qomolangma is like a light to bugs that attracts people once they hear about it. It represents the ultimate for many people," US mountaineer Alan Arnette said. Technological advances have also encouraged more people to climb the mountain. People can get high-tech safety equipment more easily than before. And with the internet, climbers know better than ever about how to reach the summit safely, Yahoo Travel noted.